On the train from Sarajevo to Ploče, a single window was open to the morning cold. It was kept that way by the two women sitting across from us for the duration of the four-hour ride, and its single openness was an oppressive force of chill, requiring us to take our warm jackets and scarves from the neatly packed confines of our backpacks and wrap them around ourselves. I pulled the drawstrings of my sweatshirt hood tight and crossed my arms across my chest. The women looked at us a few times but made no move to close the window. I suppose I could have asked, but I honestly hate asking strangers to do anything for me. Instead I try to make my wishes obvious and hope that they will read my mind accordingly, and acquiesce. It is a stubborn, tiresome, and useless habit. It never gets me anything I want.

It was in this bundled, still-slightly-chilly state that we stepped off the train in Ploče, Croatia, where apparently September is blessed, beautiful summer. We stripped off our layers eagerly and wandered with mouths agape at the palm trees (perhaps we should have expected this? I certainly didn't) we passed on our way towards the center, where we filled our empty bellies with some miserable pasta and mediocre salad before catching a bus to Dubrovnik. When all else fails in Europe, our fallback method of feeding ourselves has become this. To be fair, the place was simply a roadside bar serving Italian-ish kind of food, and we didn't expect much beyond mere filling of our stomachs.

The bus to Dubrovnik was about 20 minutes late arriving in Ploče, and as we showed our tickets to the driver he told us each of our bags would cost 7 kuna. He said this very fast, urging us to hurry up and get on the bus as fast as possible. It was rather rude and I sort of resented the implication that somehow we were making him late, rather than the other way around. This resentment recurred a little while later, when we made what was announced to be a "20 minute" rest stop. More like forty-five or fifty minutes later, the driver finally sauntered back to the bus chewing on a sandwich. I don't begrudge anyone their shift-break certainly, but the previous rushing seemed silly now that we apparently had time to hang out munching away twice as long as the scheduled break allowed for.

I'm grumbling.

In any case, none of this really mattered too much because the drive to Dubrovnik pitted the awe at the exquisite landscape - monstrous cliff faces dropping down into green-blue, interrupted only by small villages with quaint red-tiled roofs built seamlessly into the hills - against the utter fear at the possibility of tumbling over, as most of the roads wound quickly and without guardrails around sharp curves, high up on the cliffs that dropped straight down onto fearsome rocks, and then to the sea.


We arrived in Dubrovnik in one piece, and managed to find our way to the one camp-site which is actually in the city. There are other camp-sites between six and fifteen kilometers away, in neighboring villages, but since we only had two days in Dubrovnik and we didn't want to have to rely on buses to get to/around the city (we prefer to walk whenever possible, both to save money and to get a better feel of wherever it is that we are staying), we decided to stay at Camp Solitudo.

Despite the tranquil and promising name, Camp Solitudo was really just a large parking lot with  a few trees. It was a mix of electric-power campsites for RVs and tents, but mostly RVs. We set up our tent as far away from the RVs as possible (though by the second night of our stay, three new campers had literally surrounded our tiny tent, as if they had driven around looking for us in particular in order to set up a fortress of RV power around us), and set about getting our tent set up. The site was a long walk from the old city or the city center, and it was getting dark by the time we were all settled, so we decided to just cook some beans and rice and call it a night, so we could get a fresh start the next day.

In our original plans, made long long ago in Massachusetts, we hadn't even thought of going to Dubrovnik at all. However, when my grandmother heard we were planning on checking out Croatia, she told us not to miss this historic city. She had traveled there with her art group years ago. Once you see Dubrovnik, its clear what business a gathering of artists would have there. The old walled part of the city is an incredible sight, both from the ground and from on top of the city walls, which you can pay a fee to access and use to walk around the entire old city. Picturesque red-tiled roofs layer the view, cascading down the cliff walls and  a gentle brick-red slope that reaches out towards the Adriatic.


Naturally such a beautiful place must also be a tourist trap, but we weren't deterred by the hoards of tour groups we knew we would encounter. I don't really mind touristy spots if there's a good reason for it. Stupid things like going to see the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen are a waste of time, but it's not hard to see why so many people flock to the old city walls of Dubrovnik. The charm of it almost takes your breath away. There's also the historical aspect-- most of the homes in the old city have been re-built (yes, those charming old red roofs are not so old after all) after the city was nearly destroyed by the Serbians in 1991.

Our plans for Dubrovnik were pretty undemanding. We would be there for two full days, and all we wanted to accomplish was to walk the city walls, swim, and book and go on a sea kayaking tour of local caves (we are not usually ones for organized tours, but we had seen this advertised some time ago and it was very reasonably  priced and sounded too awesome to pass up).

Our first day we headed on foot into the old city, about a forty-five minute walk from our campsite. The regular, non-historic part of Dubrovnik is nothing special, but it was hot and sunny out, and part of the walk took us past the sea, where we had a great view of the cliffs jutting out. We saw some people diving and swimming off of some rocks far down below, and we decided to figure out how to get there. It looked private and beautiful. We wandered down the street a few minutes until we found a small gate that opened and led down some stairs to a dirt path, which we followed. We were quickly rewarded with another set of stairs which cut steeply down the hill and then into the rocks themselves. Soon we found ourselves on the large rocks we had seen from above. There were only a few people sitting and sunning themselves. From there, we could strip down to our bathing suits and dive right into the perfect Adriatic. The water was blue-green and so clear, you could see to the rocks at the sea floor. It was temperate but still cool enough to be a refreshing break from the hot sun of the day. The salt stung my eyes a little bit and we both couldn't help grinning like idiots as we splashed around. I have rarely felt so blissfully happy as I did then.

This is me, exploring the limits of happiness

Afterwards we lay on the cliffs for awhile.


We struck up conversation with a Polish guy who was there as well. We talked briefly about the weather (too hot for him, he said!) and the water (amazing to be able to swim in water like this, being used to the frigid Atlantic, we explained), and then we changed and huffed our way  up the long, steep stairway to the street, where we continued walking towards the old town as if we had never stopped.

A few minutes from the historic walled part of the city, we stopped to sit outside at the Art Cafe, which served coffee, smoothies, and cocktails.It was noon by then. We shared our now-almost-traditional beverage break of coffee for Aram and a beer for myself and sat for awhile in the cafe, enjoying the excellent 90s hip-hop they were playing. The place looked pretty awesome, too.

Note the seat made from a bathtub

After this we continued on again towards the Old City. Just before the walls, we saw a guy standing with a kayak paddle trying to catch the attention of people walking by. Upon closer inspection we saw that he worked for the exact tour company we were looking for, and so we were able to book the kayak tour for the next day right then and there.

We were both extremely pleased with the day so far. Beginning with an unexpected swim off those mostly-private cliffs had put me in an exceptional mood. We proceeded to the walled city, where we walked around for awhile letting our eyes wander over all the touristy crap for sale, which, while usually not worth any amount of money you could drop on it, is almost always fun to look at, and then we bought tickets to walk around the city on top of the walls. We debated for a few minutes about doing this or not, as it cost more than we wanted to pay, but eventually decided to do it, as it was one of the few specific things we intended to do upon visiting Dubrovnik.

It turned out to be more than worth it. The walk is not a quick stroll, but more like an hour, or more if you really take your time, and it offers a fascinating and breathtaking view of Dubrovnik. I could try to find some more flattering adjectives to explain what this looked like, but it's better just to look at the pictures:







It was a very hot day and the walk around the city walls offered no shade, so we were sweaty and tired by the time we finished. We grabbed a drink at a nearby bar/coffee shop, where we changed back into our bathing suits, and cooled off with another swim, this time right outside the city walls. It wasn't nearly as private as our morning swim, but taking a dip in the water next to this shit was pretty awesome:

If you look carefully you can see Aram on the bottom right

At this point we were hungry. We had used up the last of our cooking gas on our oatmeal that morning, and unforunately had been informed by the kayaking guy that Dubrovnik didn't really have any outdoor-type stores, so we were out of luck until we could get some in Split in a few days. We had been lucky enough to notice a vegetarian restaurant earlier in the day, and decided to head there to check out the food.

Nishta is a combination of raw and vegan/vegetarian food. We had seen from walking around the rest of the old city that prices for restaurants in Dubrovnik are pretty much certifiably insane, so we were happy with the even semi-reasonable prices that Nishta offered. We could have gone outside the city for dinner, but we knew from our walk in that our options were mediocre pizza and pasta, and god we were so fucking sick of those. The food at Nishta was excellent and healthy, so we were happy.

This is the thing about being a vegetarian that I really like (okay, one of the many things). If you are a meat eater and you want to have a fairly high-quality, thoughtful, well-prepared meal at a nice place with good atmosphere and service, you can be looking at upwards of fifty dollars a person for an entree and a starter. If you want wine or dessert, you might as well put down a hundred and start there (!!). For a vegetarian, unless you're eating at some world-class insanely famous vegan place, you're not looking at a ton of money for a really nice meal. Nishta was certainly expensive for me, and for most of this trip we've been trying to survive off street-stand fruit and peanut butter sandwiches when we can't cook for ourselves, but for the special occasion of a fancy meal, it was under forty dollars total for the two of us to each eat a starter and a main dish. The food was well-prepared, normal-sized, and reasonably good for us. The service was actually the most attentive we've had in Europe so far. We got to sit outside under a beautiful sky. Once in a while, I don't mind paying a little more for a meal like that, especially because I think about how much more I would be paying if I wasn't a vegetarian.

But I digress. We walked the forty-five minutes home, picking up some bread and fruit for the next day since we wouldn't be able to cook breakfast. The only thing we had on our plate the following day was the kayak tour, so we decided to wake up early enough to get in another swim at the private cliffs.

Once again, starting the day with diving into that green-blue water was an experience that can't really be beat. I guess I wouldn't want to live in Dubrovnik permanently - the tourism would get to me, sure, and I do like my cooler weather. But the bliss of being able to just wake up and swim in this private, beautiful place, with no fast-food stands, tourist umbrellas, people yelling, lifeguards, floaties in the water showing you what part of the ocean is "reserved" for swimmers... well, it's great. I guess I've made my point.

Aram, encouraged by a Russian guy hanging out at these cliffs, jumped off. It's higher than the picture makes it look!

We got coffee at Art Cafe again, enjoying the habit of it, and headed leisurely towards our meeting place for the kayak tour. Our guide was a wonderful, huge, burly, bearded guy with long hair whose name I am embarrassed to admit I don't remember. He was from the northern part of Croatia and he was wonderful. He shared some interesting history of the city during breaks we took. Aram and I have been kayaking before, but only on rivers. I have never been sea kayaking and it was definitely harder than I was prepared for. It is very different to kayak on a river where the current is at least generally moving you in the direction you want to go, and to kayak in the sea where the waves and current are moving you in a bunch of different directions. The sea was also pretty choppy that day, so it was a challenge. However the view of Dubrovnik from the water made it worth it.

A little sleepy before starting maybe?

After paddling for awhile we landed on the rocks inside a partial cave mouth. Here we were given snorkels, which was especially awesome. Aram had never been snorkeling before and he was really into it.





After about an hour's break for swimming, snorkeling, and sandwich-eating (very important, as at this point we were starving!), we paddled back.

Our guide was also helpful to us afterwards. Aram and I had been wanting to try hitchhiking in Croatia. We weren't sure how easy it would be to get from Dubrovnik to Split by hitching, but we figured it was worth a shot. We asked our guide for advice about which roads were the most likely to catch a ride on, and he was able to tell us (turns out there's really only one main road leading north out of Dubrovnik), so we planned to get up early the next morning and see what happened. We are planning to hitchhike some more in France, where our plans are much more open and we can kind of go with the flow a little more, but we did already have a couchsurfing host lined up in Split who was expecting us at some point the next evening, so we couldn't wait forever for a ride. We decided we would find a a good spot and try there for an hour and a half, and if we didn't get a ride, we'd walk back and take the bus. This seemed reasonable given the experiences detailed on hitch-wiki for Dubrovnik, where people had given their waiting times for a ride between twenty minutes and an hour.

That evening, as I was walking back from the bathhouse at Solitudo, a stray cat caught my attention. There were tons of stray cats around Dubrovnik and especially around the campsite. We'd tried to pet a few of them, but they were all pretty unfriendly. This one, however, was really little, and I thought I'd reach out and try to touch her head. She immediately lifted her chin to me, and then came over and kind of snuggled behind my legs. She was making little noises that sounded a bit concerned. It was then that I noticed a cat we'd tried to feed the night before lurking nearby- a big, mean looking cat. A bully cat. The little cat hid behind my legs, crying out occasionally. I bent down and scratched her head awhile. She came around and sat right on top of my feet and I noticed that one of her ears was all cut up, probably from the bully cat she was so afraid of. I let her sit on my feet until the bully cat walked away, and then I reluctantly walked back to the tent.

As I was sitting inside, packing up my backpack for the following morning's departure, I saw some movement outside. Suddenly, the little stray cat pressed herself against the mesh tent door! She had followed me back to the tent. From that point forward, for the rest of the night, she followed me everywhere. She heeled better than any dog I've ever seen. She followed me to the bathroom and back, to get water, to the main house's porch - simply everywhere. Aram and I could barely handle it. She crawled into our laps and cuddled with us. She was the sweetest cat I have ever encountered in my life.


It was very hard to have this interaction. We talked about ways we could possibly keep her, but we couldn't see how. If only this had been the end of our trip, not the middle with a few weeks of uncertain traveling and crossing between new countries ahead of us! She was breaking our hearts.



When it came time for us to go to bed we made her a little nest inside our rain fly but outside the tent (we would have let her sleep inside, but she wouldn't have been able to get out if she needed to, and there were too many mosquitos to leave the flap open). Sometime in the middle of the night, we heard a cat fight and we ran outside. The bully cat was picking on our cat! We yelled at her and shooed her away and then took our cat in our arms. I tried to make a little fort out of our boots so she would be more protected. As it turns it, our cat was a genius and didn't need it, because an hour or two later we awoke to the sound of the cat pulling herself up the side of our tent and curling up on top of it, in the little flat space between the top of the tent and the rain fly. Yes, it was the most wonderful thing I have ever seen.


When we left the next morning she was hanging out with some other nice cats at someone's trailer and it looked like the woman was feeding her, so that was good at least. Still, it is still hard to think of her and I wish we could have figured out a way to take her home.


The next morning we got packed up as fast as possible and headed out. It took us a long, long time to find a good spot for hitching. Neither of us has much experience hitchhiking at all, as it's generally considered to be much more dangerous in the United States and so we haven't tried at all.

In Europe, hitchhiking is much more common, and is generally considered to be much safer. We've talked to a few different people while couchsurfing who have been hitchhiking a lot throughout Europe, and have learned a little bit about safety through their experiences. Two of us hitching together is obviously going to be safer than one of us alone, especially if it was me, a girl, alone. That's unfortunate, but it's the truth. Beyond that, people are more likely to pick up a single girl or a couple rather than a single man. This we kind of knew before, but it was confirmed by a Brazilian guy we met, who had been hitching alone all around Europe.

Anyway,  it was really, really hot that day, and we walked for maybe an hour and a half looking for a good spot. We followed signs to Split and ended up taking a really roundabout route, but eventually we made our way up onto the main road above Dubrovnik. The view was awesome, and we wouldn't have gotten to see if it we had just taken a bus in the first place.

We chose a spot near some angled parking spaces on the side of a main entrance to the highway. It was safe to stand there, we were very visible, and there was plenty of room for someone to pull over if they decided to pick us up. Also it was past the split-off for the airport, so most likely anyone going that way would be heading at least generally northwards, if not specifically to Split.

Once we had picked our spot, we stood there for our designated hour and a half trying to catch a ride. Lots of people passed us and some even waved or made other friendly gestures, but we weren't able to get anyone to pull over for us. We didn't have a sign, which we know will probably help us next time. The Brazilian guy we talked to (who we actually met on the bus we ended up taking when hitchhiking failed... he had made it quite far with hitching, but had been unsuccessful in getting a ride all the way to his destination, so he had decided to take a bus as well) also suggested having some kind of creative schtick or object to make people laugh and catch their attention. He had a hilarious hat with an ugly fake stuffed chicken on it. He said it had worked wonders for him. He told us about some friends of his who blow bubbles. At the very least, in France we will have a sign and maybe a funny picture on it or something!

It was afternoon by the time our hour and a half was up, and we trekked the long way back to the bus station and bought tickets for the next bus to Split. The ride was weird and disjointed - we made a bunch of stops and at one point the bus driver pulled over at a station and said we would wait there for five minutes. Twenty minutes later, he suddenly announced that everyone had to get off the bus immediately and get on a different one. Obviously this one was super crowded. I'm not sure what happened or why we had to do this. Whatever it was, it was stupid and I hated it.

We arrived in Split a little before 8pm, said goodbye to our new Brazilian friend, and, with the help of some very kind strangers who overheard our confusion about the public transportation, made our way to our host's apartment. I cannot get over how great it is when someone overhears me saying (with obvious anxiety, I'm sure) "I don't know, I don't know which bus to take, she just said go towards the hospitals...umm...shit...," they immediately turn and say "I can help you! Where are you trying to go?"

It shouldn't surprise me anymore; people in Croatia have consistently been unnecessarily helpful and kind.

Our hosts in Split were the wonderful family of Jadra, Drago, and their wide-eyed, curious son Janko, who was born in January, and they fell in with this rule completely. They let us use their kitchen, which I was incredibly pleased about, as it had been awhile since I had gotten to use a kitchen to cook, and I missed it. We made lots of food during the three nights we were there, and it was a pleasure to get to share it with Drago and Jadra. Janko of course was too little but Jadra joked that we were welcome to come back in a year or so when he was eating more solid food and cook for them again. I realize how incredibly happy it makes me to cook for other people. I love to see people getting full and enjoying something that I've made, and I love to enjoy it with them. I wish I could just becomes a professional dinner party host, or something. I would never want to be a chef - I think making cooking my business would take the joy out of it for me, and anyway I'm not nearly gourmet enough for something like that. But I will definitely keep cooking for others as much as possible, especially strangers whenever the opportunity arises!

Jadra and Janko

 We didn't have many plans for Split either, which was nice. Dubrovnik had been beautiful, of course, but very touristy, and so in Split we planned to just wander the city without any tourist sights in mind. Our first morning there, after cooking and eating banana pancakes with Jadra, we asked her the nicest way we could walk to the center, and she pointed to a road which led to the beach. It was an excellent suggestion.We wandered through an abandoned old campsite and followed some half-crumbling stone stairs down to a path which wove along the whole way of the beach towards the center of Split. It was an interesting walk. Once we reached what seemed like the center we left the beach and wandered kind of aimlessly for most of the day, which is my favorite way to see any city of course. We got lost for awhile, ending up by accident in the historic area containing the cathedral, which we decided to see the next day.





As we were walking, we kept seeing graffiti that said "Hajduk" and "1950" where the 0 was a circle around a cross. The strange thing about this graffiti was that most of the Hajduk graffiti looked extremely official. That is to say, though there were messy looking tags sprayed around, there were also a lot of clean, well-done, stencil-looking pieces, that had the inexplicable feeling of being almost state-sponsored. Additionally, a lot of the art had a slightly menacing undertone. The 1950 with the circle and cross seemed racially motivated to us somehow. Sometimes the two symbols appeared together, sometimes the Hajduk or the 1950 just alone. We did some research and figured out that Hajduk is the name of the Croatian football team, and 1950 refers to the year a large fan group for Hajduk was created. When 1950 appears just as numbers, without the circle and cross, it just refers to this. However, the cross within a circle is indeed a racist symbol, and when we were seeing the tags which replaced the 0 in 1950 with this symbol, it was the result of some asshole marrying racism with football.

I think this stands for "white boys."

It's interesting to think about this. I think it's fair here to make a comparison in terms of national importance of soccer (European football) with American football. Though there is obviously strong team loyalty from state to state in the US, teams are not nationalistically (and thus, sometimes, racially or ethically) charged the way they are in Europe. This reason for this is obvious - you may love your Eagles, and someone else may get into a fistfight with you over it because they really love their Cowboys, but when it comes down to it, you're both American, and both teams are American. There is only one football team in Croatia - the Croatian team (not to hit the point home too hard, or anything). It's easy to see how nationalism can get extremely, almost violently tied up in football because of this. In America you might have a bar brawl over football, but you wouldn't have a racially, ethically charged riot.



I'm not speaking theoretically. In Croatia in 1990, an enormous riot took place at Maksimir Stadium in Zagreb between Zagreb fans and Belgrade fans. Just a few weeks before the match was scheduled to happen, Croatia's multi-party elections had resulted in a majority of votes favouring Croatian independence. The ethnic tensions between the Croatians and the Serbians was probably not helped at Maksimir by the fact that the group of Serbian fans (called "Delije," meaning "heroes") was led to the match by Arkan, who was not only a famous Serbian nationalist, but was also a wanted criminal.

You can read about the tensions leading  up the start of the match in detail if you google it, but suffice to say that basically chaos ensued, and over sixty people were injured, according to wikipedia "including some stabbed, shot and poisoned by tear gas."

Yeah. Fuck.

Also apparently in Croatia this incident is kind of symbolically thought of as the beginning of the Croatian War of Independence, though the official start to the war wasn't until well over a year later.

Ok American football fans, do you think you really love your team now?




Anyway, this made for some interesting walking around in Split. It had been a hot day but as the sun started going down it cooled off and it was very pleasant to walk back along the beach the same way we had come.


We stopped at the local grocery store and Bio market (these organic shops are so, so much more common in Europe, I don't know what America is doing wrong) to pick up some more stuff for dinner. We cooked for Jadra and Drago again and spent more time playing with Janko, who is seriously the best baby ever. He looks at you with these giant eyes that are really truly focused on you, which is kind of unusual for a child that age. He loves to move around and is constantly pulling himself up on things and standing up. I had bought a sunhat earlier in the day and we had a photoshoot while he tried it on.


The next day we walked into town via the road instead of the beach, just to see something different. We did some more getting lost and Aram got a haircut from a bright and bubbly Croatian girl who spoke very little English but was very charming in her hilarious and eventually successful attempts to mime to us that Aram should let me cut the back of his hair/shave at the base of his hairline, because he had fucked it up doing it himself.

We eventually found our way to the cathedral and looked around inside, where unfortunately no photos were allowed. There was an unusually graphic image of Christ on the cross. He was bleeding more than usual. That's about all there is to say about that. Some pretty interesting and ornate altars.

After that we climbed the bell tower for a small fee, which was definitely worth the view.



We walked back and ate lunch with Jadra, which she had kindly prepared for all of us, and relaxed for a little while before heading to the nearby beach for a sunset swim. The water and the swim were, of course, impossibly blissful and beautiful, as all things in Croatia are proving to be.





We were both sad to have to pack up that night, having enjoyed our hosts and our time in Split so much. Jadra and I shared some really nice conversation while we were there. It was interesting to hear her thoughts on being a mom. She is a woman who has travelled a lot, who has vibrant and varied interests that are similar to my own, but she doesn't seem to feel like she's lost anything now that she has to stay home with her son. You can tell that her ultimate goal now is to be a mom, to interact with Janko in the best and most fulfilling ways she can, and to learn every day new things about being a mother. You can tell when she looks at her son how much she loves him, and how in awe she is of him. Both she and Drago are wonderful parents. I admire her so much, and I hope if I am a mother one day (far far far away!) I will be as patient, kind, and energetic a mother as Jadra.

Zagreb up next!